Category: Greenland ice melt

With the temp rise, the loss of diatoms and the loss of coral (erroneously in my opinion termed ‘bleaching) the bryozoans fail, die because the microscopic partners have gone. Therefore to paraphrase trump … “Who would have known invisible things could be so complicated” … yup!

I got the link above from arctic-news … makes for the grimmest reading, but I’m glad its there. As I’ve learnt and repeated for the life of this blog the past year it is the sledge hammer threat from the thawing subsea methane that will stop the pendulum of life. Its a fact, its elementary observation and realisation, things as yet hardly seen that we cannot get politicians or the IPCC to take heed; the latter as generally acknowledged by climate-savvy scientists to be a report twenty years behind; witness the fact that the IPCC does not even recognise or factor in the importance of arctic methane release which in fact will be the death of us all.

Yet can we get ‘the man in the street’ to ponder on these things, to think a little bit more ???

Go back to my post half a year ago ‘making a model of planet Earth’ we are in fact a habitable zone of a wet cigarette paper placed on a childs 8inch football. Thats all we have and so hence our habitable layer is ultra sensitive to change, is staggeringly interconnected in all climate systems, jet stream, oceanic waterflow, gulf stream, accelerated melting of Greenland ad infinitum … never mind the fun down in the Antarctic.

Please note I always have my radar turned on for either plain simple crackpot sites or sites designed to mislead or render a subject as ‘nuts’ ie misinformation. Beware that general media can be ‘loaded’ in this respect. My own beef being bbc radio news r4 being so un-crtical of trump and their choice of words actually sounding to support him or serve him up in the best light. That is what I think is the value of my blog, quality material.

postscript …. we may as well have the video from the latest arctic-news, it makes a valuable contribution.

Its just hit me, this year I cannot recall seeing the little hoverflies that used to be so prevalant at my local nature reserve the ‘pit heap’.

In five years time will I be able to see any honeybees, any pied flycatchers here in the UK ?? … I think the answer will be negative.

Are massive and most likely catastrophically so. The battle is with nature and the natural world of feedback systems. All were in place, fully functioning and in equilibrium well before we walked upright.

To paraphrase the twit in the White House …. “Who would have thought Climate Change could be so complicated” … Yes and so powerful and so all enveloping. Its ‘everything’ and its as if the roulette wheel decides our fate on one cruel spin.

Carbon capture must happen, yet so far its exploratory and small scale. And may I interject that for each oversize SUV or needless pick-up there will be a swathe of carbon capture apparatus to offset the crap!

The IPCC for instance does not even factor in loss of Arctic ice; its computer modelling is twenty years behind the times and not one recognised Ice Scientist was on the panel. Its as if we are suffering from collective stupidity, the Brits cannot handle the Brexit problem, the Americans are saddled with an idiot in the White House.

Heres some exclamation marks !!!!!! and a few more !!!!!

Below is a vid tieing in Prof Peter Wadhams (Arctic Expert) and a presentation in immediate response to IPCC outdatedness / time lag / ineptitude.

Govts can quote any target for the future, yet we all know theres always a shortfall that is excused away sometime hence…

To contradict the IPCC, reaforestation is in a practical world not feasible; timescale too! But it always makes nice tv to see junior school bods piddling about with seedlings… Germany for instance is stripping forests to get at open cast mining of lignite … dirty dirty dirty.

Also the bitchiness, obfuscation and sheer downright twattery of Science reared its head when Dr Wadhams chapter on arctic methane was omitted from a written book / presentation for a Conference in China (without informing Prof Wadhams) because we are told the Harvard Prof in charge did not believe Arctic methane was a possibility !!! Remember that methane will arrive from three sources, geological, microbial and the release from thawing frozen hydrates; all from vast areas previously frozen we never visit nor can visualise in their seemingly endless expanse, ie East Siberian ice shelf which exists in huge swathes of shallow sea.

Interestingly Stuarts presentation included ‘Villian of the Day’ naming Theresa May in which she has sanctioned fracking and fossil fuel infrastructure; I don’t know details.

Succinct and direct vid and also illustrates the flow outwards of ice into the North Atlantic. I wld have liked more written text but I assume format precludes, its an intentional brief hit of info.

Note also that its thickness that matters, from above we can still see some of the whiter older ice but at what thickness? Likewise Grenland, likewise everywhere. Here 7th Dec NE England its far too warm this morning, car thermometer tells me 10deg C.

This link below provides a lot of topics for discussion, the primary one being the IPCC falls short of providing the full picture of where we are heading with Climate Change; of falling short of what could be likely reality in the years ahead.

As I’ve always said (at least from Nov 2017 which was for the first time I switched on to Climate Change) …. the IPCC incorporates large scale carbon capture that has yet to be invented in any serious form and ignores the upcoming effect of methane in its three forms ie geological, microbial and thawing hydrates. Lets enumerate the points and note that I do agree with what Sam Carana has to say which I argue is not bias but reason, the evidence and common sense. When trump as yesterday states that the Climate Change Scientists are being ‘political’ he himself is operating at a totally political and morally unsound position. Every sane thinking person on the planet knows this, the canaries are screaming but trump and his twisted and bitter white old men of the GOP insist otherwise !!!

Let me work through to precis Sams points …

IPCC has moved the baseline (though I’ve yet to read the IPCC document) … imagine already how much smelting, burning of coal, steam power had added carbon to the atmosphere already by 1850.

IPCC erroneously applies a straight line projection for whatever lies ahead, in reality its a huge tangle of interconnected self and mutually re-inforcing feedback ever increasing feedback loops. What engineers call positive feedback ie an expotential knock-on and is an upward curve, never conforms to a straight line plot.

IPCC ignores spikes, these causing the really nasty shock effects.

IPCC baseline chosen to wallpaper over the worse view from any other historical baseline.

IPCC playing with the stats.

Anomaly as ocean temperature is at surface and land temp figs as air based figures, this Sam Carana tells us can introduce error.

Method and missing data not embracing latest thinking / developments

IPCC omits temp spikes of 2016 that would have as yet again increased the projected figures and are omitted.

WOW … IPCC does not take into account all the real world happening now events ie snow and ice loss, albedo effect, methanes, last ten year carbon effect, aerosol effect, increased water vapour feedback, jet stream alteration, sea level rise and expansion, green plant CO2 conversion fall off, carbon from wildfires, etc etc. Each single point is so very interconnected and all exacerbate each other. May I add loss of diatoms and plankton that are major CO2 to O converters as well as being part of ocean weather systems, losing coral reef being a symptom of a the more fundamental crash in ocean food chain, the diatoms. Its time now for a fast tracking approach to science, silly bloody clusters of cagouled junior scientists out on the ice shelf / mass is looking a bit twee; a two year peer review is too slow.

IPCC seems stuck in a time bubble, looking at a carbon ‘budget’ approach when in fact carbon is a massive deficit, a carbon bankruptcy, a bankrupt carbon lifestyle that has to be fundamentally altered (which I doubt we can).

Same old song, IPCC is deficient in abolishing fossil fuels.

Tax or fees needed on polluters. Note the worlds obsession with cheap air travel, polluting gas guzzlers, car based lifestyle (of which I too am some way guilty). In my opinion even electric vehicles are suspect and not as green as we’d like to think.

Okay, enumerated rant over. As stated previously, I keep things brief here at this new blog of mine. Human nature being what it is, hubris, the desire for status-objects and lifestyle, recreational air travel, a meat diet … all are near insurmountable obstacles. There would have to be unwavering catastrophe before affluent western populations realise changes must occur and of course global warming and climate change being what it is ie a cumulative self re-inforcing feedback all change would be too late.

There are three embedded vids at the bottom of Sam Caranas blog, lets listen to the first briefer version of Prof Peter Wadhams wise words (a practical Scientist, a lifelong specialist in sea ice) and pretend not to notice the tedious drawn out intro …

IPCC non-alarmist, soft pedalling on feedback machanisms.

IPCC pays no attention to potential run-away warming.

IPCC by not mentioning a major contributor/s its as if it doesn’t exist !

More of the same little sticking plasters or feelgood initiatives are no longer any good.

Note that even if we stopped all emmisions ie 100% … its already not sufficient to avert us to catastrophe.

World expert on sea ice Prof Wadhams tells us that what the IPCC says on sea ice is ‘daft’. Listen to this crap from the IPCC “An ice free summer once every hundred years” !!!

To approximately quote Prof Wadhams “One would have thought that by now the IPCC would be so embarrassed by its out-dated modelling to have withdrawn that type of approach”. “Pretending the situation isn’t the way it is”.

Not a single well-known sea-ice researchers name on the author list from the IPCC.

Lets not forget thawing permafrost and the East Siberian iceshelf.

I’ve thought for years that a condensed print onto paper resume of such talkie vids would save time, get the point across quicker. You can name the app after me …..

It vexes me at the increasing and needless number of ever bigger SUVs and even more expensive cars that my neighbours buy; quite needless as we can hardly assume they are involved in ‘light haulage’! I assume they a) feel they need them and b) are drawn into such a value system. I’ve a neighbour that eats nothing but meat and most others that value a meal at its meat content or its closeness to an oversized burger. Others that thrill at their endless air travel, even a weekend break involves the airport or the insanity of a weekend home a thousand miles away. I’m no angel, far from it but strive to somehow do better, to keep things simple, a lighter carbon footprint and have done for years; at least my work is nearby and I’ve no need to venture more than a few miles.

I’m no genius. I try to include links and hope people revisit the sites over time so as to see whatever is latest. Therefore a link followed from here can update itself and be a regular port of call providing lots of material to mine into. Heres one from the very useful site neven1 that I posted recently and takes us to … a link to material published in 2004 and still certainly is worthwhile reading ie ….. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/wardhunt

I need to try to seek out more of the microbial/ algal activity of the deposits mentioned, but I know fine well such microscopic imagery will hardly exist, so seldom is it shown to the wider public and I don’t know why, are there journalistic filters that are blind or ignorant to this ??? I don’t think David Attenborough has any interest in this either. This baffles and annoys me, yes we can take the sight of a diatom without wretching.

diatoms anyone can see through a simple microscope.

The algal/ protozoan aspect of this fascinates me and looms large in my approach to nature. You can’t see it but it is very important and on a global scale utterly essential for life on this planet. Its a bit like my curiosity for chemtrails, as with algae it is not direct and in your face but it most certainly is important. It must have been mighty difficult or near impossible centuries ago to get people to realise theres important and essential ‘worlds’ all around us that cannot even be seen! I could imagine rustic types tekkin excitedly o de ‘atoms’ theh chessed oot ont fields yisterdeh, lowped ower’t wall, but deyn’t worry, he nos where deh nestin ….

I cannot get it to copy and paste and being an old geezer my instant reaction is draw it on paper, but taking pics and uploading is a chore for me now mostly. Recently its popped into my mind several times that drawing maps freehand would be a useful hobby for me and in fact for kids too … most are woefully ignorant of the shape of countries, location, the assemblage of the land masses. Something to draw you out of yourself and is not connected with money and also the pursuit of what I call an American style ‘leisure lifestyle’ and sold to us as consumerism… create some quiet time, another version of a Tea Ceremony! Use an atlas in book form, no need for a screen for this one. Screens in fact are page specific likewise the material delivered by google, books in some or many instances can provide a so much broader and serependitious view ie you can leaf through the pages. Thank goodness I grew up in a pre-web age.

One thing I do miss about the pre-web days is how easy it was to stumble upon new things, for instance art in its various forms, architecture, sculpture, paintings, watercolours, sketches; thought made visible by clever and talented people.

Got it …..

Its more than just a ‘map of the land’ my initial choice of ‘nature’ in the post title fits better as the change and disturbance of temperature means that the brown areas ie high altitude peatlands are in for a catastrophic awakening. Remember that methane exists in three forms, geological deposits, frozen hydrate and microbial action. But on reflection ‘reaction’ fits better as boy-o-boy these huge unpopulated land masses are most certainly going to react. Remember too the slowing down of transpiration of green growing things in reaction to increased CO2; diatoms / algae much affected (another converter out in the oceans) reduced regeneration or new growth of trees due to water and heat stress and the myriad of self amplifying and interconnected amplifying interconnected feedback loops. Certainly the increasing desire for a meat based diet is wasteful of resources, too expensive ecologically and can be seen to lag fifty years as to what we should be doing nowadays. Its not easy to keep this to an intentional brief post as is the fashion these days. Thats why theres previous posts here to read through. I’m learning as I go …..

In 2010 a Russian marine survey conducted more than 5000 observations of dissolved methane showing that more than 80% of East Siberian shelf bottom waters and more than 50% of surface waters are supersaturated with methane. Atmospheric methane levels (during glacial periods: 300–400 parts per billion; during interglacial periods: 600–700 ppb) have recently reached 1850 ppb – the highest in 400,000 years (see Figure 2b)

Much food for thought and would have liked to think could prod for Governmental and worldwide action. The only country to pull out of the Paris Agreement, trump is an odd character to say the least, he needs enlightened influence, not the circle of courtiers and grim outdated lobbyists at present whispering to his ear. Likewise Elon Musk, if he’s as clever as he portrays he should forget about cars (EV are not that green in a full carbon audit anyway) and get into carbon capture. If trump turned on this and got climate change savvy it would be the greatest boost possible for the world to like him, its win-win for everyone.

postscript … re drawing maps freehand. People wouldn’t do it but they’d blow thousands jetting to places they needn’t go. I am very anti air flight, always have been.